Alice Oswald

Dart follows the River Dart in Devon through many voices, including swimmers, workers, walkers, and the river itself. The book won the 2002 T. S. Eliot Prize and is often read as a documentary poem as much as a nature poem.

Memorial removes much of the Iliad's narrative and concentrates on the deaths of named warriors. It turns an ancient epic into a stark sequence of names, similes, and acts of remembrance.

Oswald became Oxford Professor of Poetry in 2019, a post previously held by poets and critics such as Seamus Heaney and Paul Muldoon. Her appointment reflected her status as one of the most prominent English poets of her generation.

Memorial is the usual next step if the interest is classical myth and formal experiment. Falling Awake, which won the Costa Poetry Award for poetry, is better for readers drawn to short, intense poems about nature and perception.